Tuesday, 19 January 2016

January - WS Mervin

So after weeks of rain
at night the winter stars
that much farther in heaven
without our having seen them
in far light are still forming
the heavy elements
that when the stars are gone
fly up as dust finer
by many times than a hair
and recognize each other
in the dark traveling
at great speed and becoming
our bodies in our time
looking up after rain
in the cold night together

Monday, 11 January 2016

Dusk and snow this hourin argument have settlednothing. Light persists,and darkness. If a starshines now, that shine isswallowed and given backdoubled, grounded bright.The timid angels flailedby passing children liftin a whitening windtoward night. What playsbeyond the window playsas water might, all partsmaking cold digress.Beneath iced bush and eave,the small banked fires of birdsat rest lend absencesto seeming absence. Truthis, nothing at all is missing.Wind hisses and one shadowsways where a window’s lampglowhas added something. The restis dark and light together tolledagainst the boundary-rivenhouses. Against our lives,the stunning wholeness of the world.

Saturday, 9 January 2016

From other
angles the
fibers look
fragile, but
not from the
spider’s, always
hauling coarse
ropes, hitching
lines to the
best posts
possible. It’s
heavy work
everyplace,
fighting sag,
winching up
give. It
isn’t ever
delicate
to live.

From other
angles the
fibers look
fragile, but
not from the
spider’s, always
hauling coarse
ropes, hitching
lines to the
best posts
possible. It’s
heavy work
everyplace,
fighting sag,
winching up
give. It
isn’t ever
delicate
to live. - See more at: http://www.persimmontree.org/v2/summer-2011/sixteen-poems/#sthash.qSCOj5W9.dpuf

From other
angles the
fibers look
fragile, but
not from the
spider’s, always
hauling coarse
ropes, hitching
lines to the
best posts
possible. It’s
heavy work
everyplace,
fighting sag,
winching up
give. It
isn’t ever
delicate
to live. - See more at: http://www.persimmontree.org/v2/summer-2011/sixteen-poems/#sthash.qSCOj5W9.dpuf

Wednesday, 6 January 2016

Well that's it, Christmas is officially over today with the feast of the Epiphany, or Three Kings. This poem from UA Fanthorpe is ideal I think for the occasion, especially that last line. The spectacles and stories of Christmas may be over, but not their significance. Up to us now, alright.

Tuesday, 5 January 2016

It's always so sad putting away the Christmas tree and decorations! But, it 'had its hour' and now a time for a new chapter to begin, twinkle-lit memories to accompany us into it.

The Christmas Tree - Cecil Day Lewis

Put out the lights now!
Look at the Tree, the rough tree dazzled
In oriole plumes of flame,
Tinselled with twinkling frost fire, tasselled
With stars and moons - the same
That yesterday hid in the spinney and had no fame
Till we put out the lights now.
Hard are the nights now:

The fields at moonrise turn
to agate,
Shadows are cold as jet;
In dyke and furrow, in copse and faggot
The frost's tooth is set;
And stars are the sparks whirled out by the north wind's fret
On the flinty nights now.

So feast your eyes now
On mimic star and moon-cold bauble;
Worlds may wither unseen,
But the Christmas Tree is a tree of fable,
A phoenix in evergreen,
And the world cannot change or chill what its mysteries mean
To your hearts and eyes now.

The vision dies now
Candle by candle: the tree that embraced it
Returns to its own kind,
To be earthed again and weather as best it
May the frost and the wind.
Children, it too had its hour – you will not mind
If it lives or dies now.

Friday, 1 January 2016

Happy New Year! And thank you all dear readers for your constant readership, comments and appreciation throughout the year. Here's to a lot moreof 'metaphysics of the quotidian' in the coming year, the real kind of magic, a lot of it translated of course through poetry.

Tomorrow - Charles Wright

The metaphysics of the quotidian was what he was after:
A little dew on the sunrise grass,
A drop of blood in the evening trees,
a drop of fire.

If you don't shine you are darkness.
The future is merciless,
everyone's name inscribed
On the flyleaf of the Book of Snow.

Poetry lovers, loathers or newbies - I'd love to hear from you! Leave a comment by clicking on comments below a postand signing in with your Google ID, blog/website or Anonymous if these do not apply. Or feel free to email me at siobhanbsb@hotmail.com

The poem is not a thing we see - it is, rather, a light by which we may see - and what we see is life. ~Robert Penn Warren

Poetry is ordinary language raised to the nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words. ~Paul Engle

Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away. ~ Carl Sandburg

The crown of literature is poetry. It is its end and aim. It is the sublimest activity of the human mind. It is the achievement of beauty and delicacy. The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes. ~W. Somerset Maugham

Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does. ~Allen Ginsberg

Poetry is plucking at the heartstrings, and making music with them. ~Dennis Gabor

"Always learn poems by heart," she said. "They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like the fluoride in the water, they'll make your soul impervious to the world's soft decay.'"~ Janet Fitch, 'White Oleander'

A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman. ~Wallace Stevens

Poetry is the development of an exclamation. ~Paul Valery

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words. ~Robert Frost

Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. ~Percy Byshe Shelley

Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash. ~ Leonard Cohen

Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement. ~Christopher Fry

Poetry should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance. ~John Keats

Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard. - Anne Sexton

If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way? ~ Emily Dickinson

The poet is the man made to solve the riddle of the universe who brings the whole soul of man into activity. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge